Careful Words

malice (n.)

  In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill-will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow-men, not knowing what they do.

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848): Letter to A. Bronson. July 30, 1838.

Better be with the dead,

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,

Can touch him further.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 2.

  From envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness.

Book Of Common Prayer: The Litany.

I have done the state some service, and they know 't.

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice. Then, must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought

Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act v. Sc. 2.

That practis'd falsehood under saintly shew,

Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 122.

  With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.